Attachment Style

Our style of attachment affects everything from our partner selection to how well our relationships progress and to how they end. That's why recognizing your attachment pattern can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses in a relationship. An attachment pattern is established during early childhood attachments.

Take this test to find out what kind of attachment style you have (choose survey B);
I'd like to know whether or not you find your test result accurate and why.

Combining your anxiety and avoidance scores, you fall into the preoccupied region of the space. Previous research on attachment styles indicates that preoccupied people tend to have highly conflictual relationships. Although they are comfortable expressing their emotions, preoccupied individuals often experience a lot of negative emotions, which can often interfere with their relationships.

Since the test doesn't offer much information about the attachment styles, I thought I'd post a description of each one of them;

Dismissive Avoidant Attachment = A person with a dismissive/avoidant attachment has a tendency of emotionally distancing themselves from their partner, because they fear intimacy and because their working model is that the way to get your needs met is to act like you don’t have any. They deny the importance of loved ones and detach easily from them. They often choose a partner who is possessive or overly demanding of attention. A Dismissive often has a story of a previous relationship which ended when their partner left, early on in their love life. The memory of this idealized previous partner is used as a weapon when the Dismissive tires—which they quickly do—of a real relationship and its demands. In their minds, no one could measure up to the one that got away. This is another distancing trick to keep real intimacy at bay.

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment = A person with an anxious/preoccupied attachment feels that in order to get close to someone and have your needs met, you need to be with your partner all the time and get reassurance. They tend to be desperate to form a fantasy bond. Instead of feeling real love or trust towards their partner, they often feel emotional hunger. They’re frequently looking for their partner to rescue or complete them. Although they’re seeking a sense of safety and security by clinging to their partner, they take actions that push their partner away. They often choose a partner who is isolated and hard to connect with.
FearfulAvoidant Attachment – A person with a fearful/avoidant attachment lives in an ambivalent state, in which they are afraid of being both too close to or too distant from others. They attempt to keep their feelings at bay but are unable to. They can’t just avoid their anxiety or run away from their feelings. Instead, they are overwhelmed by their reactions and often experience emotional storms. They tend to be mixed up or unpredictable in their moods. They see their relationships from the working model that you need to go toward others to get your needs met, but if you get close to others, they will hurt you. The person they want to go to for safety is the same person they are frightened to be close to. As a result, they have no organized strategy for getting their needs met by others.

As adults, these individuals tend to find themselves in rocky or dramatic relationships, with many highs and lows. They often have fears of being abandoned but also struggle with being intimate. They may cling to their partner when they feel rejected, then feel trapped when they are close.

Secure Attachment = This is the ideal attachment style. Securely attached adults tend to be more satisfied in their relationships. Children with a secure attachment see their parent as a secure base from which they can venture out and independently explore the world. A secure adult has a similar relationship with their romantic partner, feeling secure and connected, while allowing themselves and their partner to move freely.

Secure adults offer support when their partner feels distressed. They also go to their partner for comfort when they themselves feel troubled. Their relationship tends to be honest, open and equal, with both people feeling independent, yet loving towards each other.

I got "secure" and was pretty much in the middle between high avoidance and low avoidance. After reading the descriptions and even before I took the test, I honestly thought I would be more on the "dismissive" side.

We have plotted your two scores in the two-dimensional space defined by attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. Your approximate position in this space is denoted by the blue dot. (Note: If you left any of the questions unanswered, then these scores may be inaccurate.)

As you can see in this graph, the two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance can be combined to create interesting combinations of attachment styles. For example people who are low in both attachment-related anxiety and avoidance are generally consideredsecure because they don't typically worry about whether their partners are going to reject them and they are comfortable being emotionally close to others.

Combining your anxiety and avoidance scores, you fall into the preoccupied region of the space. Previous research on attachment styles indicates that preoccupied people tend to have highly conflictual relationships. Although they are comfortable expressing their emotions, preoccupied individuals often experience a lot of negative emotions, which can often interfere with their relationships.

Combining your anxiety and avoidance scores, you fall into the preoccupied region of the space. Previous research on attachment styles indicates that preoccupied people tend to have highly conflictual relationships. Although they are comfortable expressing their emotions, preoccupied individuals often experience a lot of negative emotions, which can often interfere with their relationships

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment = A person with an anxious/preoccupied attachment feels that in order to get close to someone and have your needs met, you need to be with your partner all the time and get reassurance. They tend to be desperate to form a fantasy bond. Instead of feeling real love or trust towards their partner, they often feel emotional hunger. They’re frequently looking for their partner to rescue or complete them. Although they’re seeking a sense of safety and security by clinging to their partner, they take actions that push their partner away. They often choose a partner who is isolated and hard to connect with.

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Like Natty, I feel personally attacked. Lol. Never have I taken one of these surveys and it actually hit the nail on the head so accurately. They even nailed the kind of person I always find myself most attracted to. o.o